No More Squash Soup...well at least for a while

Here's my crazy thought process....

Once I found out that summer squash's natural sugars start to turn to starch the moment it's cut from the vine...making it it's sweetest when prepared and eaten ASAP....I could never buy it in a grocery store again, much less get it from any other source but from someones garden or the farmers market, when the blossoms are still attached or the end cut is still freshly seeping.

So, since Wayne's garden is so prolific in summer squash production this year I find myself buying pounds and pounds of it, not wanting it to "go to waste", or missing my opportunity to eat such nutritious freshness. But enough is enough. It's killing me to not "get, while the gettin's good", and although I'm not even sick of it yet, I'm only one person and I've got enough!

Last week I bought fresh squash from Wayne (and about 7lbs of tomatoes too), AND I got squash in my CSA box, AND I traded my big red beets for....what else...more freakin' squash! So I got out my 8qt stock pot sauteed onion, jalapeno and kale stems, threw all of the squash (cut up) with about 6 c. chicken stock and made over 4 quarts of fresh squash, jalapeno and kale soup. I was curious to get an exact calorie count for my own purposes, since I eat so much of it, I was careful to weigh all ingredients.

Here's the calorie breakdown;

5 lbs summer squash 495 cal.

1 lg onion 64 cal.

4 jalapenos 16 cal.

1 lb kale 70 cal.

2 tbl. oil 200 cal.

chicken stock 0 cal.

These amounts made 17 pints of soup for a total of 845 calories, that's about 50 cal. per pint....so wonder I eat this way! 4 cups of soup = 100 calories. I froze most of this soup in 1 and 2 pint containers (2 & 4 cups). I love this soup with the addition of roasted corn, but you can add any grain like brown rice or quinoa and any other veg, another favorite is blanched chinese long bean, which I had for dinner last night. Don't forget to add a protein to make it a meal.